The Law Library of Congress has a wealth of material that provides sources for research in women's history, in both the basic
and the more tangential issues that have had an impact on women's individual lives and on the society in which they have found
themselves. Legal materials add a dimension to scholarly studies that has not often been exploited. Although the law may not
be as immediately interesting as journals or scrapbooks of individual women, the fact that the legal community and the people
who formed it took the time to legislate and later to litigate an issue indicates that such an issue was integral to the times
in which they lived. To omit a consideration of how the law developed is to disregard a crucial aspect of the lives of women.